of the Chickadees took this warning seriously, and set about learning
how and when to go; but Tomtit, who led his brothers, only laughed and
turned a dozen wheels around a twig that served him for a trapeze.

"Go to the south?" said he. "Not I; I am too well contented here; and as
for frost and snow, I never saw any and have no faith in them."

But the Nuthatches and Kinglets were in such a state of bustle that at
length the Chickadees did catch a little of the excitement, and left off
play for a while to question their friends; and they were not pleased
with what they learned, for it seemed that all of them were to make a
journey that would last many days, and the little Kinglets were actually
going as far as the Gulf of Mexico. Besides, they were to fly by night
in order to avoid their enemies the Hawks, and the weather at this
season was sure to be stormy. So the Chickadees said it was all
nonsense, and went off in a band, singing and chasing one another
through the woods.

But their cousins were in earnest. They bustled about making their
preparations, and learned beforehand what it was necessary for them to
know about the way. The great wide river running southward, the moon at
height, and the trumpeting of the Geese were to be their guides, and
they were to sing as they flew in the darkness, to keep from being
scattered. The noisy, rollicking Chickadees were noisier than ever as
the preparations went on, and made sport of their relatives, who were
now gathered in great numbers, in the woods along the river; and at
length, when the proper time of the moon came, the cousins arose in a
body and flew away in the gloom. The Chickadees said that the cousins
all were crazy, made some good jokes about the Gulf of Mexico, and then
dashed away in a game of tag through the woods, which, by the by, seemed